Only clear writing

The Queen's English: And how to use it is a practical guide to clear, unambiguous writing. It includes lots of amusing examples, such as (from the section on hyphens) "the black cab driver" (which one is black - the cab or the driver?) and (from the section on commas) "we ate chocolate, cakes and ices" (without the comma, we would have been eating chocolate cakes). Here is an excerpt (pp. 89-90) on the proper placement of the word "only". 

"Only is the most frequently misplaced word in English.... It should normally be placed directly before the word it qualifies. 

"Only I ran to the house. The other people did not run to the house.

"I only ran to the house. I ran but did not walk, hop or skip to the house.

"I ran only to the house. I did not also run to the park or the fence.

"I ran to the only house. There were no other houses.

"The placing of only has a fascinating range of implications, as shown in the exercise below. It can cause ambiguity. See if you detect any ambiguity here:

"He only drinks port in the evening. 

"It could mean that he drinks nothing but port in the evening, with no whisky, beer or other drinks then, or that when he drinks port, it is only in the evening. A strict grammatical approach is that only qualifies the following word, the verb drinks, and that when he has port in the evening, he only drinks it, rather than spewing it or bathing in it. Clearly it would be better to put:

"He drinks only port in the evening, or

"He drinks port only in the evening.

....

Exercise

"Put the word only in all possible positions in this sentence and consider the implications:

"The psychologist gave the baboon the banana.

The placing of only has implications for the presence, absence and number of other investigators, animals and fruits, and alternatives to gave."

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